Did I Shoot Myself In The Foot With My Company Name?

[kentheriot]

I fear I may have made an unfortunate choice in the name of my on-line company and subsequent url. But as usual, opinions of those "who have gone before" matter greatly to me.

My "product" is teaching/supporting people to start (or improve skills at) recording audio from home. We decided that since creating stuff from your home is often called "home brewed" whether it is beer or not, we could call it "Home Brew Audio." It sounded great at the time. Now I'm not so sure.

Here are a few reasons why I doubt.

- "homebrew" is apparently now a popular term in the computer-programming and gaming communities to denote applications created by users and regular folks to be used on Play Station, XBox, etc.

- The term still pops up a lot when people are looking for anything related to actual home brewing of beer, etc.

Did I shoot myself in the foot with the name of my company?

Thanks!

Ken

[angienewton]

Ken,
I don't know what to tell you other than the domain wouldn't make sense to me however there are a lot of us that have domains that really don't make sense (see mine, losing it and loving it..what does that mean? LOL) to anyone BUT we the sites and blogs are still successful. You're focus is going to be to set up search engine optimized pages so honestly the domain name can be whatever you like.

[lisamariemary]

I actually did think your business was about home brewing beer when I first saw it. Now that I read a little further, I know it's not. But like Angie says, the name does not always really hold that much importance.

Ha! People always wonder if I really do spelunking! (hippiespelunker.com) The answer is ...no. I 'spelunk' in my head for stuff I wanna blog about. LOL!

But look at Google - Yahoo - Bing - those aren't even 'words' we knew before they hit the scene. Know what I mean?

If you think you're early enough in, I guess you could change it. But if not, I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. Just make sure to keyword optimize for other stuff and perhaps you'll soon fall in the ranks of the home beer brewers Google searches....

[CindyBrock]

Would you like to borrow my cane for your injured foot? Been there, done that.

I think you have to change the name. Beer brewing is very popular right now and there is no logical transition for a web searcher who's look at beer brewing to go to audio recording at home.

http://www.cindybrock.com/smileys/beer.gif

[David Jackson]

Did I shoot myself in the foot with the name of my company?

In a word...yes! One of the basic rules of naming a business is don't confuse potential prospects. Your business name should easily identify what you do at a glance. Even if that means you can't get the dotcom version of your domain.

Look...mistakes happen. It's not the end of the world. The good news is it's not too late to fix your mistake. Take your time and brainstorm a new domain name - one that tells prospects what you do at a glance.

If you need help coming up with a new name, just ask. I'm always happy to help.

Best of luck to you!

David Jackson

[Engage]

Unless you already have a bunch of traffic, get a new keyword researched domain name, as others have said.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

And, keep the current name, and use it for a site where people can upload clips of the ridiculous things their friends do while fueled on beer brew. Who knows, maybe you have the right domain name, but the wrong topic! :)

[deniseoberry]

I get this question a lot. Here is some guidance -- http://www.deniseoberry.com/index.php/2010/05/08/skip-your-name-when-naming-your-business/

Also, don't worry too much about getting a domain name to match your business name. If you can make it work, fine. If not, move on with a good domain name. It's keywords that will bring traffic.